City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Graduate Center 2-1-2017 American Civil Associations and the Growth of American Government: An Appraisal of Alexis de Tocqueville s Democracy in America (1835-1840) Applied to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and the Post-World War II Welfare State John P. Varacalli The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit you? Let us know! Follow this and additional works at: http://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds Part of the Other American Studies Commons, Political History Commons, Political Theory Commons, and the Politics and Social Change Commons Recommended Citation Varacalli, John P., "American Civil Associations and the Growth of American Government: An Appraisal of Alexis de Tocqueville s Democracy in America (1835-1840) Applied to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and the Post-World War II Welfare State" (2017). CUNY Academic Works. http://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1828 This Thesis is brought to you by CUNY Academic Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Graduate Works by Year: Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects by an authorized administrator of CUNY Academic Works. For more information, please contact deposit@gc.cuny.edu.
AMERICAN CIVIL ASSOCIATIONS AND THE GROWTH OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT: AN APPRAISAL OF ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE S DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA (1835-1840) APPLIED TO FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT S NEW DEAL AND THE POST-WORLD WAR II WELFARE STATE by JOHN P. VARACALLI A master s thesis submitted to the Graduate Program in Liberal Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, The City University of New York 2017
2017 JOHN P. VARACALLI All Rights Reserved ii
American Civil Associations and the Growth of American Government: An Appraisal of Alexis de Tocqueville s Democracy in America (1835-1840) Applied to Franklin D. Roosevelt s New Deal and the Post World War II Welfare State by John P. Varacalli The manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Liberal Studies in satisfaction of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Arts Date David Gordon Thesis Advisor Date Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis Acting Executive Officer THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii
ABSTRACT American Civil Associations and the Growth of American Government: An Appraisal of Alexis de Tocqueville s Democracy in America (1835-1840) Applied to Franklin D. Roosevelt s New Deal and the Post-World War II Welfare State by John P. Varacalli Advisor: David Gordon In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), a French aristocrat, intellectual and commentator on American society during the 1830 s, described the United States as a society marked by a general equality of condition, that is, by a lack of noticeable social and economic distinctions among the citizenry. 1 For Tocqueville, this characteristic of democracy encouraged the formation of an informal political bloc he termed the majority - a group who would often elect demagogues to political offices, since the latter were best able to give voice to majority opinion. 2 Furthermore, de Tocqueville believed that this group was not only capable of influencing, but also of controlling, the country. To an aristocrat, not so far removed from a pre-revolutionary France governed by Estates, this was shocking. (It had been traditionally assumed in Europe that the quality of individuals was more important than any numerical majority, and that the opinions and beliefs of a small number of aristocrats, the best people, counted for more, or at least should, than those of the uneducated masses.) As a member of a family that had been threatened with destruction during the first French Republic, it was also 1 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen (New York: Vintage Books, 1945), 3. 2 Ibid., 222. iv
frightening. 3 It is no wonder that Tocqueville labelled this phenomenon the tyranny of the majority. 4 Political sociologist Clause Offe argues that de Tocqueville believed that this tyranny could also eventually lead to a significant growth in the size and power of government at all levels. 5 In twentieth century America, these leveling tendencies, and the tyranny of the majority, have found expression in the growth of big government. In this regard, de Tocqueville was remarkably prescient. Offe s analysis is central to the question that this thesis addresses which is, is the present state of civil associations, operating outside of government, and thus sometimes in opposition to majority opinion, able to preserve individual dissenting voices from the group think that frequently finds expression in the actions of big government, typified by the programs initiated first by Franklin Roosevelt s New Deal and continued in the post-world War II American welfare state? It now becomes necessary to define terms. A civil association is a group of citizens who freely and without coercion organize outside of government control to promote some special end, whether social or political. 6 A voluntary association is a civil association devoted to achieving some local community goal, while a political association is designed to accomplish some political end. 7 Typical examples of the activities of voluntary associations are religious instruction provided by church groups, community events and street fairs supported by 3 William Doyle, The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 33; Jeremy Popkin, A History of Modern France. Third Edition (Upper Saddle River NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., 2006), 7, 8; Hugh Brogan, Introduction in Ancien Régime and the Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 2008), xi. 4 Thomas Clark, The American Democrat Reads Democracy in America : Cooper and Tocqueville in the Transatlantic Hall of Mirrors Amerikastudien / American Studies 52 (2007), 188. 5 Clause Offe, Reflections on America: Tocqueville, Weber & Adorno in the United States (Malden MA: Polity Press, 2005), 29; Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings. (Boston MA: Bedford / St. Martin s, 2008), 116. 6 Tocqueville, Democracy in America Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 199, 202; Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings, 116. 7 Tocqueville, Democracy in America Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 199; Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings, 116. v
local businesses, and the charitable endeavors promoted by groups like the Knights of Columbus and the United Way. Examples of the activities of political associations are citizens organizing for the provision of vouchers or tuition tax credits for private elementary and high schools, neighborhood associations attempting to ban pornography in their hometowns, and local groups trying to set limits on what they perceive to be the excessive salaries and benefits provided to public officials. 8 De Tocqueville s analysis does seem to make one thing clear. The tyranny of the majority, under present circumstances, is contributing to the continued growth of government. 9 At the same time, it is also true that the growth of government has in turn increasingly been strengthened the tyranny of the majority. This work therefore poses a second question. If civil associations cannot at present control the growth and power of government, are there any methods by which they can be strengthened, and the historical ideal of limited government be retrieved? This work, rooted in historical analysis, argues that American society is heading down a particular path, i.e., toward an omnipotent government and, conversely, toward an impotent set of civil associations. It also suggests that this is in part the product of Americans having become increasingly unable to deal with the uncertainties of modern life, leading to a state that Émile Durkheim has called anomie. 10 Many Americans have not opposed the growth of government, because they see this as a particularly effective means of assuaging the personal, psychological, and economic insecurity common during the Great Depression and post-world War II eras. For them the state has become an all-embracing protector in a world that they believe they can 8 Edward C. Banfield, A Critical View of the Urban Crisis The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 405 (1973), 8. 9 Clause Offe, Weber, Tocqueville and Adorno, 29. 10 Lewis Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context. Second Edition (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1977), 132, 133, 135. vi
neither understand nor control. This fearful and passive attitude works against the determination, courage and sense of purpose that animates the citizens of all strong and healthy societies. It therefore poses a great danger to the American republic. While feelings of insecurity and anomie have long pre-dated the 1930s, responses to these have traditionally involved participation in local associations such as churches and neighborhood organizations, as well as of course family. Today, the role of aiding people in their social and personal angst has been usurped more and more by government agencies. Robert Nisbet has observed that the traditional way of dealing with personal and societal insecurity has been a quest for community. 11 Yet it is precisely the decline of community that has been one of the most noticeable phenomena of twentieth century American life. 12 A key turning point in this change was the catastrophic collapse of the free market economy between 1929 and 1933 that resulted in massive, albeit temporary, unemployment. One of the most important long term effects of this pivotal moment was the growth of large scale government bureaucracies that today not only deal with the problem of unemployment, but have expanded into an increasing number of functions that include health care and education. In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville had suggested that joining voluntary associations one type of civil association provided a way of both creating and preserving community. However, many contemporary Americans, instead of summoning up the commitment and dedication to work that is required to build and maintain civil associations, have taken the path of least resistance by allowing and supporting the rise of governmental organizations that have rendered formerly effective civil associations both superfluous and impotent. 11 Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community (Wilmington DE: ISI Books, 2010), xvii. 12 Offe, Weber, Tocqueville and Adorno, 35; Nisbet, The Quest for Community, xvii. vii
The case of unions, as one kind of civil association, is instructive. Greatly strengthened by the 1935 Wagner Act (the National Labor Relations Act), they were once vital in protecting the material and political interests of many American workers. 13 Despite government protection, they were free standing, independent organizations organized by private citizens to defend against other private organizations such as modern industrial corporations. Today they have increasingly been co-opted by a Democratic Party that by its very nature is associated with government at all levels. In a variation of Max Weber s famous dictum, that charisma that had informed their creation has become routinized, unions today benefit Democratic Party politicians more than the average rank and file member. 14 Even more strikingly, the general indifference of unions to those outside their organization, and especially to the welfare of society at large, has become increasingly harmful to the general public. This is particularly true of public-sector unions that have frequently worked in tandem with Democratic politicians to win high pay and very generous pensions at the expense of the taxpayer. 15 One key purpose of this thesis is to investigate how effective or not civil associations have been in challenging twentieth-century sentiment in favor of the expansion of government. Conversely, it suggests the ways in which government has weakened the ability of civil associations to provide both meaning and direction for individuals and to protect the political and civil rights of the general population. At their very best, civil associations temper and weaken the tyranny of the majority - that eternally restless and occasionally dangerous political lynch mob - through the creation of internal divisions in society working at cross purposes with each other. The effect of this is not 13 Joseph Rayback, A History of American Labor (New York: The Free Press, 1966), 341-342, 323. 14 Max Weber, The Nature of Charismatic Authority and Its Routinization in On Charisma and Institution Building (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 48-65. 15 Fred Siegel, The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class. (New York: Encounter Books, 2013), 154, 158, 159, 172, 174. viii
only to reduce feelings of personal anomie by bringing individuals into informal association with others, but also to create a large number of interest groups that divide the majority in a variety of ways. In doing so, following the thought of John Calhoun, the possibility of freedom of action in variance with the majority is made more likely for all. 16 16 William W. Freehling. Spoilsmen and Interests in the Thought and Career of John C. Calhoun The Journal of American History 59 (1965), 27, 28. ix
Table of Contents Introduction..1 On Alexis de Tocqueville s Analysis of Civil Associations in American Society during the 1830s 4 The Role of American Civil Associations during the New Deal Era of Expanding Government (1933-1945): A Review of the Scholarly Literature..14 An Appraisal and Interpretation of the Role of Civil Associations and Government in the United States during Franklin D. Roosevelt s Presidency (1933-1945) 17 Towards the Weakening and Disappearance of Civil Associations in Post-World War II America: Reflections on the Growth of the Welfare State 25 De Tocqueville Updated: Reflections on Popular Culture, the Growth of the American Government, and the Legacy of the New Deal..41 Concluding Question: Can the Mediating Structures Approach of Peter Berger and Richard Neuhaus Revitalize Civil Associations and Bring Back Limited Government in a Post-Great Society Era in the United States?...44 Bibliography..55 x
"Man is not free unless government is limited." - Ronald Reagan The American Republic will endure until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money." - Alexis de Tocqueville "Government's first duty is to protect people, not to run their lives." - Ronald Reagan Introduction In predicting the growth in government in the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville s Democracy in America makes two important, albeit seemingly contradictory, observations. On the one hand, de Tocqueville claimed that the Federal government is visibly losing strength. 17 On the other, he was apprehensive about the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), claiming that many Americans feared that men of Jackson s ilk would give a degree of influence to the central authority that cannot but be dangerous to provincial liberties. 18 Combined with this, de Tocqueville made clear that he believed the state governments were even more tyrannical than the Federal government. 19 The size of American government has grown enormously since the time of Jackson. Lynn Marshall notes that Jackson was the first American president to create an important public sector bureaucracy in the United States. 20 However, while the size of the Federal government did grow during the course of the nineteenth century, it should also be realized that it did so in a relatively slow and incremental manner. The change was nonetheless significant. The 1887 17 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 421. 18 Ibid., 430. 19 Ibid., 89, 90. 20 Lynn Marshall, The Strange Stillbirth of the Whig Party The American Historical Review 72 (1961), 462. 1
creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission and the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act are both examples of this. The ICC was an attempt to control railroad rates. Long desired by farmers, state laws controlling the railroads failed when they were found by the Supreme Court to be interference with interstate commerce. The Commission nonetheless remained largely powerless until strengthened by the 1906 Hepburn Act, passed during the Theodore Roosevelt presidency. This not only strengthened the ICC, but also, at least in the minds of some, throttled [the] international railroad and shipping business. The Sherman Act, likewise, was used to break up [the] Northern Securities Company. 21 Although the passage of this legislation demonstrates that the size and growth of the federal government was more significant than it was during the antebellum period, Milton Friedman has observed that government spending, in 1929, was only 3% of total gross domestic product, (barring of course periods of war). 22 While the rate of growth was not particularly remarkable during the nineteenth century, the size, number, and influence of governmental organizations did increase remarkably later on, especially during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945). 23 (There was of course an even more remarkable increase in the amount of government interference and spending during the Second World War when, according to economist Robert Heilbroner and historian Aaron Singer, the government placed over $100 billion in contracts in its determination to mount a gigantic war effort. ) 24 A shift in American public opinion contributed greatly to this change. Federal agencies had been rapidly created to cope with the catastrophic collapse of the economy and a twenty-five 21 Burton Folsom Jr, The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America (Herndon VA: Young America s Foundation, 2010), 125 22 Milton Friedman, Why Government is the Problem (Stanford: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, 1993), 15. 23 William R. Brock, Welfare, Democracy, and the New Deal (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), vii. 24 Robert Heilbroner and Aaron Singer, The Economic Transformation of America (New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Atlanta: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1977), 205. 2
percent unemployment rate. Democratic party leaders knew that this would immensely increase their popularity. 25 This is ironic. In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville was emphatic in arguing that supporting decentralization was a way of gaining the support of the American majority. While this is a reflection of an antebellum political culture that, among other things, sought to protect the institution of slavery, it was also an indication of the general suspicion of the growth and power of government on the part of the American population at the time. 26 There was thus a remarkable change in attitude between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. This continued not only through the New Deal, but well into the post-world War II era and, indeed, up to the present. 27 In other words, the existence of big government in America has increasingly become taken for granted by the American public. While the popularity of the New Deal programs is understandable considering the gravity of the economic crisis, the continued support for increased government interference in people s lives after the war is not. Roosevelt s programs did not get America out of the Great Depression. Only the Second World War did that. 28 The fundamental disconnect between the policies of the 1930s and the war went long unperceived by the general public. (One must admit that even in the 1930s some Americans challenged the massive growth of government. But while there were some dissent, civil associations, they were, generally speaking, ineffective in challenging a public opinion that had become progressively more in favor of political centralization and big 25 Heilbroner and Singer, The Economic Transformation of America, 179 26 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 421, 420, 395. 27 Phillips Bradley, A Historical Essay in Democracy in America: Vol. 2 (New York: Vintage Books, 1945), 465; Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 193; Jonathan J. Bean, Big Government and Affirmative Action: The Scandalous History of the Small Business Administration (Lexington KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2001), 4; John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth (New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1948), 183. 28 Burton Folsom Jr., New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America (New York: Threshold Editions, 2008), 247. 3
government.) But more importantly, America entered a period of unprecedented prosperity after the war, in part due to the devastation of all competing industrial economies. It was an advantage that would last for almost thirty years. The nation was therefore particularly prosperous in the 1960s. Yet it was precisely in that decade that government penetration into areas previously outside of its traditional purview became most insistent and relentless. 29 The most pressing question in the context of this thesis is why. Alexis de Tocqueville provides a clue. On Alexis de Tocqueville s Analysis of Civil Associations in American Society during the 1830 s Before examining de Tocqueville s ideas about civil associations and the positive ramifications that they had and might continue to have, it is first important to discuss a few of his assertions that are central to his understanding of democracy and American society. In Democracy in America, he famously stated that: the social condition of the Americans is eminently democratic; this was its character at the foundation of the colonies, and it is still more strongly marked at the present day. 30 Regarding political culture during the early 1830 s, he found, more specifically, an equality of condition, that is, that real wealth was somewhat evenly distributed, and that the differences in social status between members of the American citizenry were, relatively speaking, less evident than were the social distinctions found in Europe. 31 Furthermore, de Tocqueville concludes that there was more freedom in the United States than in European countries, and that Americans were avowedly and enthusiastically 29 Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 (New York: Basic Books Inc., 1984), 24. 30 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 48. 31 Ibid., 3. 4
champions of liberty and republican self-government. 32 Being measured in his judgement, he also noted that there exists in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom. 33 De Tocqueville thus not only observed what philosopher Max Scheler has termed ressentiment, but also asserted that the average American, in practice, values equality more than freedom. 34 It was only in theory that liberty was held to be the highest value. De Tocqueville also noticed that the phenomenon of ressentiment, common throughout the American body politic, contributed to the creation of the aforementioned majority. 35 He believed that many Americans, because they were morally weak and easily succumbed to jealously, often surrendered to the influence of public opinion - the political, social and cultural modes-of-thought that were popular among the majority at any particular moment. De Tocqueville not only insisted that public opinion really exists, but that it had pernicious consequences, including shaping the outcome of elections and the formation of public policy. 36 For the author, these sentiments valuing equality over civil liberties led him to say I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. 37 According to the author, Europeans actually debated religion and politics in a more open and friendly manner than did Americans. 38 32 Ibid., 56; Brogan, Introduction xvi, xvii; Offe, Tocqueville, Weber & Adorno, 11. 33 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 56. 34 Ibid., 245, 3, 245; Max Scheler, Ressentiment, trans. Lewis B. Coser and William W. Holdheim (Milwaukee WI: Marquette University Press, 1994), 29. 35 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 421, 420. 36 Ibid., 426, 271, 129. 37 Ibid., 273. 38 Ibid., 273. 5
De Tocqueville argued that this majority usually consisted of members of the lower classes, who, restrained neither by intellect or education, could frequently display the tastes and the propensities of a despot. 39 He asserted that this is so because in America few are resigned to their place in life. As a result, [the] lower orders are agitated by the chance of success to move up the economic and social ladder. 40 Because they are invested with more political power than they previously had due to the establishment of universal manhood suffrage during the early nineteenth century, de Tocqueville suggests that they unquestionably [exercise legislative authority.] 41 He concluded that [universal] suffrage, therefore in point of fact does invest the poor with the government of society. 42 Encouraged to think boldly, they discover a multitude of wants that they had not before been conscious of, and to satisfy these exigencies recourse must be had to the coffers of the state. 43 De Tocqueville viewed such expenditures resulting from government spending to be, in a word, expensive. 44 It could also be dangerous. Tocqueville summarized his understanding of the American majority as follows: What is called the republic in the United States is the tranquil rule of the majority, which after having had time to examine itself and to give proof of its existence, is the common source of all the powers of the state. 45 He believed that public opinion influenced American political culture and public policy, declaring that [the] political maxims of the country, therefore, depend on the masses of the people. 46 Because they have sovereign power, De Tocqueville judged that they also had the power to destroy or modify political institutions at their pleasure. 47 (As an 39 Ibid., 222, 280. 40 Ibid., 208. 41 Ibid., 222. 42 Ibid., 222. 43 Ibid., 224. 44 Ibid., 233. 45 Ibid., 434. 46 Ibid., 135. 47 Ibid., 180. 6
aristocrat descended from an ancient Norman family, and the son of parents first buffeted and then menaced by the French Revolution, his disquietude comes through frequently in his text.) 48 Given that de Tocqueville concluded that the majority influenced public policy through its control of the state, it is important to examine de Tocqueville s rather original conception of the state. For de Tocqueville, it was comprised of two entities, the government and the administration. 49 He viewed government as a centralized state-apparatus at the federal level tending to the needs of the whole body politic, while conceiving an administration as a public sector entity operating at the state and local level. 50 Although de Tocqueville was generally supportive of government at the federal level, it is also important to note that he was against the centralization of administration within the states. 51 In other words, he saw a parallel between the tyranny of state governments in the United States and the tyranny of centralized government in his native France. 52 This is very understandable at a time when states were all powerful, and the vaunted bill of rights of the American Constitution protected the individual only from the federal, but not from state, government. 53 States from the beginning of the Republic had had the right to establish official religions, decide who could vote, and whether or not slavery would exist within their borders. De Tocqueville understood that the American majority had the potential to arrogate the privileges of the state, possibly leading to atrocious actions. For instance, he noted that many 48 Frederick Brown, Introduction in Letters from America, (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2010), viii, ix; Hugh Brogan, Introduction, xi; Tocqueville, Democracy in America Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 100. 49 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 180, 206, 89, 90. 50 Ibid., 89. 51 Ibid., 250, 426, 250; Laurence C. Greene, Review of Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology 4 (July 1945), 556; Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1, 233. 52 James T. Schleifer, Tocqueville and Centralization: Four Previously Unpublished Manuscripts The Yale University Library Gazette 58 (1983), 29. 53 This would only change with the passage of the XIV Amendment in 1868. 7
Americans, backed by the tyranny of the government, despoiled the Native Americans of their lands. 54 He therefore advocated the formation of civil associations as a guard against any crime committed by majority-tyranny. 55 He asserted that associations protected and promoted the common good of American communities. 56 He also understood that civil associations should be local, tied to some particular township or county. 57 In this way they could encourage virtue and good local government without aspiring to the overweening power that allowed government to commit great crimes. He might also have understood that local civil associations operating in the smaller arena of a state could have greater effect than in the confines of the entire nation. Just as the Founding Fathers had hoped to preserve liberty by fragmenting political power among the states, so de Tocqueville thought civil associations could work against potential majority tyranny within the states by atomizing that informal bloc that he so feared. As mentioned above, de Tocqueville made a distinction between two types of civil associations: political and voluntary. 58 In Democracy in America, he first discussed political associations. 59 He explained that this type of organization is established to promote the public safety, commerce, industry, morality, and religion. 60 He subsequently elaborated upon their organizational structure, asserting that it consists simply in the public assent which a number of individuals give to certain doctrines and in the engagement which they contract to promote in a certain manner the spread of these doctrines. 61 For de Tocqueville, these political associations would sometimes advocate unpopular causes, such as the abolition of slavery. He stated that, 54 Tocqueville, Democracy in America Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 364. 55 Ibid., 202; Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings, 116. 56 Tocqueville, Democracy in America Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 199. 57 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings, 57-58. 58 Ibid., 116. 59 Ibid., 116. 60 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 199. 61 Ibid., 199. 8
because these associations do not represent the majority, they could therefore make a positive contribution in challenging public opinion and the political power it represented. 62 Anti-slavery societies were, in fact, the most important type of political association that existed during de Tocqueville s time. Inspired by Christian thought, William Lloyd Garrison in 1831 spearheaded a New Abolitionist movement that castigated slaveholders as evil. 63 By 1831, there were over 130 anti-slavery groups in the United States. 64 Examples of anti-slavery societies during the time of de Tocqueville s writing were the Manumission Society of North Carolina, the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, the Pennsylvania Society for promoting the Abolition of Slavery, the Relief of Free Negroes unlawfully held in bondage, and for improving the conditions of the African Race, the New England Anti-Slavery Society, the American Colonization Society, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, the American Anti- Slavery Society, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, the Liberty Party and the Tennessee Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves. 65 (It might be noted that most of these societies were not interested in granting citizenship rights to freed slaves. Instead, many were interested in sending freed slaves to colonies such as Liberia in Africa.) 66 De Tocqueville then discussed civil associations that are not primarily involved with the political sphere. He calls these voluntary associations. He describes their characteristics in the following way: 62 Ibid., 204. 63 Hilary A. Hebert, The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences: Four Periods of American History (New York: Charles Scribner s Son, 1912), 57, 56, 57. 64 Ibid., 56. 65 Judith Thorne, Earnest and Solemn Protest: Quaker Anti-Slavery Petitions to Congress, 1831-1865 Quaker History 88 (1999), 49; Roman J. Zorn, The New England Anti-Slavery Society: Pioneer Abolition Organization The Journal of Negro History 42 (1957), 157, 161-62; Elaine Brooks, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society The Journal of Negro History 30 (1945), 311, 327; Asa Earl Martin, The Anti-Slavery Societies of Tennessee Tennessee Historical Magazine 1 (1915), 263. 66 Martin, The Anti-Slavery Societies of Tennessee, 273. 9
Americans of all ages and stations, all points of view, meet constantly. Not only do they belong to commercial and industrial associations, but there are countless others: religious and moral, serious and futile, some very broad and others very specific, large and small; Americans gather to celebrate holidays, establish seminaries, build inns, erect churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the far corners of the world; this is how they build hospitals, prisons, and schools. 67 Relatedly, he also observed the formation of temperance societies in the United States. Such voluntary associations he believed improved American society by promoting the common good and encouraging ordinary citizens to perform philanthropic acts for their local communities. 68 Temperance movements were in fact the most important type of voluntary associations that existed in the United States at the time. People crusaded against the use of alcohol because they believed it led people down the path of self-destruction (including reducing the ability of the body to fight off disease.) 69 Institutions that advocated temperance included Methodist groups, the Union Temperate Society, the American Temperance Union, the United States Temperance Union, the Congressional Temperance Society, the Washingtonian Total Abstinence Society, the New Haven Temperance Society of the People of Color, the New York Temperance Society, the Brooklyn (N.Y.) Temperance Association, the Home Temperance Society, the American Temperance Society, the American Moral Reform Society, the New England Colored Temperance Society, the Connecticut State Temperance Society of Colored Persons and the Temperance Society of the People of Color in the City of Pittsburgh. 70 (According to historian 67 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings, 116. 68 Ibid., 119. 69 Donald Yacovone, The Transformation of the Black Temperance Movement, 1827-1854: An Interpretation Journal of the Early Republic 8 (1988), 283, 284. 70 Holland Webb, Temperance Movements and Prohibition International Social Science Review 74 (1999), 61, 62; Eugene O. Porter, An Outline of the Temperance Movement The Historian 7 (1944), 57, 58; Donald Yacovone, 10
Eugene O. Porter, most temperance societies between 1826 and 1836 were interested in advocating abstinence by pledge from ardent spirits rather than total abstinence. ) 71 Because of their grass roots nature, the voluntary association was one of the healthiest and most admirable examples of American democracy at work, eschewing government direction in favor of local independent initiative. It is part of the argument of this thesis that the decline of this type of activity remains one of the great tragedies of modern political life. Noting this practical and pragmatic side of American culture, de Tocqueville asserted that industrial associations (another type of voluntary association) were even more important, in the minds of Americans at least, than political ones. 72 (Examples of such associations were newspaper companies, labor unions and private-sector corporations.) 73 De Tocqueville disagreed, thinking that political associations were ultimately more important than voluntary ones, since it was only the former that helped insure the existence of the latter. 74 In fact, de Tocqueville was ardent in advocating the creation of political associations, given his fear that democratic societies would eventually devolve into tyrannical ones. Worrying that democracies could potentially lack a sufficient number of effective associations of this kind, he concluded that no measure must be taken to increase the rights of democracy, that is, the tyranny of the majority, without a sufficient number of these. 75 In other words, he believed that American politics was in part a conflict between those who wished the general good of society (through locally organized political associations) and those individuals who, being only motivated by self- The Transformation of the Black Temperance Movement, 1827-1854: An Interpretation, 282, 283, 286, 287, 288, 296. 71 Porter, An Outline of the Temperance Movement, 64. 72 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings, 119. 73 Ibid., 120, 118, 119. 74 Ibid., 125. 75 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 255; Thomas Clark, The American Democrat Reads Democracy in America : Cooper and Tocqueville in the Transatlantic Hall of Mirrors Amerikastudien / American Studies 52 (2007), 188. 11
interest and the desire for power, strongly supported tyrannical state control. It is important here to distinguish between the aims promoted by the tyranny of the majority and what other scholars and moralists refer to as the common good or the good of the community. Simply put, the former refers to a form of what in today s parlance might be called politically correct thought that seeks to impose its opinions on society, while the latter represents what is right or wrong regardless of whether or not it is popular. Believing that democracy in America was not threatened by salutary political associations that move it towards the common good, de Tocqueville asserted that their existence was more necessary in democratic societies than under monarchies. For de Tocqueville, monarchies, unlike democracies, consist of a body of the noble and the wealthy, which, although representing only a small minority of the population, collectively have enough prestige [to] check the abuses of [royal] power. 76 Just as the French provincial parlements and noble lords checked the political power of kings throughout the history of early modern France, and the English House of Lords right up to his own time, he hoped that political associations in the United States might similarly reduce the power of self-serving majorities that existed in all of the individual American states. 77 To counter the possibility of democratic tyranny, de Tocqueville concluded there had to be a large number of effective political associations (such as anti-slavery societies, suffrage 76 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 202. Although de Tocqueville does not specifically address the issue, perhaps it s also the case that a sense of noblesse oblige sometimes checks the power of nobles and the wealthy. 77 Durand Echeverria, The Maupeou Revolution: A Study in the History of Libertarianism, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University State Press, 1985), xiv, 142; Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 202, 89, 90. 12
movements and free soil groups) in order to check, and if need be challenge, the power of both the American majority and the government which was its expression. 78 Given that Alexis de Tocqueville thought that notions of equality of condition thoroughly informed American culture, he also feared that the United States would eventually enter a period of decline because of the lack of respect afforded to individual genius and creativity. He believed that societal degeneration would occur in two stages. During the first stage, a democratic society like the United States would need artificial and temporary [substitutes], that is, political associations, to replace landed and mercantile notables. 79 As individuals similar to Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Adams, who had represented the last remnants of an older, aristocratic political culture inherited from colonial America, had begun by the 1830s to experience a decline in political power and prestige, they had to be replaced by grassroots organizations. The rigors of democratic practice prevented single individuals from any longer filling this absolutely essential function. During the second stage, he predicted that [the] more equal the conditions of men become and the less strong men individually are, the more easily [members of a particular association] give way to the current of the multitude and the more difficult it is for them to adhere to an opinion which the multitude discard. 80 It is this singularly unfortunate circumstance that became overwhelmingly apparent during the 1930s. 78 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings, 118. 79 Tocqueville, Democracy in America Vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 202. 80 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 2, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen (New York: Vintage Books, 1945), 122. 13
The Role of American Civil Associations during the New Deal Era (1933-1945) of Expanding Government: A Review of the Scholarly Literature In his article, A Historical Essay, Phillips Bradley concludes that both de Tocqueville s analysis and prescription had become ever more salient during the 1930 s. Observing the growth of government in America, as well as the emergence of Fascist and Communist movements elsewhere, he judged that de Tocqueville s championing of political liberties and advocacy of an equality of opportunity philosophy would benefit the entire world. 81 More specifically, Bradley documented that a tyrannical American majority - - what he labeled the fourth power - - had encouraged this growth of government. 82 Matthew Josephson provides a very different understanding of the role and functions of civil associations. Instead of positing that they should be maintained to limit a potentially oppressive government, he believes associations such as unions had to exist to control privileged groups, such as corporate capitalist elites. 83 At the same time, he supports the political centralization that was part of Roosevelt s New Deal. This was due to his conviction that the Federal government would be more successful in implementing policies for the common good than local associations which, he noted, had proven ineffective, since they did not have the resources to deal with a crisis as profound as the Depression. 84 August Nimtz Jr. has also studied the formation of civil associations in the United States during the thirties. 85 Although contemporary Marxists were generally critical of them, Nimtz 81 Bradley, A Historical Essay in Democracy in America, Vol. 2, 437. 82 The first three being of course the legislative, executive and judicial branches. Ibid., 465. 83 Matthew Josephson, A Century after Tocqueville, accessed July 1, 2016, http://www.vqronline.org/essay/century-after-tocqueville. Virginia Quarterly Online. (Autumn 1938), 8. 84 Ibid., 8, 9. 85 August Nimtz Jr., Marx, Tocqueville, and Race in America (Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2003), 183, 184. 14
points out that American Communists themselves formed organizations in the United States - - often referred to as cells - - that were highly instrumental in promoting Stalinism. 86 He claims that there were at least 100,000 members of the American Communist Party who opposed what they saw as Roosevelt s capitalist policies promoted by the growth of government. Nimtz explains the ineffectiveness of these Stalinist associations by a lack of what Marxists call class-consciousness, due to the economic, ethnic and racial divisions between various elements of the American working classes. 87 To the disappointment of the radical Left, no mass revolution overthrew the capitalist system. But despite the Marxist critique, most non-marxist scholars do not think of Franklin Roosevelt simply as a capitalist. Chilton Williamson, for instance, actually sees him as flirting with socialism. Although Nimtz believed socialism was unpopular during the New Deal era, Williamson believed that it has become popular enough to become one of the chief legacies left by Roosevelt. 88 Williamson also notes that one of the effects of this was the growth of welfare dependency during the very prosperous post-world War II era. He suggests that increasing dependency resulted more from personal and collective insecurity prevalent in the new American society than it did from the development of what Oscar Lewis has labeled a culture of poverty that is, a culture that promotes the formation of instable families which have a lack of order, 86 Ibid., 216, 184. 87 Echeverria, The Maupeou Revolution, 142; Éric Hazan, A People s History of the French Revolution, trans. David Fernbach (Brooklyn NY: Verso, 2014), 41; Nicholas V. Riasanovsky and Mark D. Steinberg, A History of Russia: Seventh Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 488; August Nimtz Jr., Marx, Tocqueville, and Race in America (Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2003), 183. After the triumph of the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution of 1917, it is worth noting that a group of prosperous peasants known as the kulaks were terrorized by those with socialist/communist sympathies. 88 Chilton Williamson, After Tocqueville: The Promise and Failure of Democracy (Wilmington DE: ISI Books, 2012), 61, 88 15
direction, and organization. 89 Due to the increasing acceptance of soft socialism (the provision of massive benefits, rather than the classical Marxist socialism of collective ownership of the means of production) and statism (the central role of the government in providing this largesse), Williamson is not surprised that civil associations that sought to challenge the centralization of the Federal government, whether the American Liberty League or the American Enterprise Institute, to name just two, became largely ineffective during the New Deal and afterwards. His work provides a detailed account of the failures of significant popular protest movements, whether Left, Right or Center, against what sociologist Peter L. Berger and theologian Richard J. Neuhaus have called the megastructures, that is, the large government bureaucracies and private-sphere organizations that dominate the public sphere. 90 Chilton Williamson is certainly not the only one claiming that the popularity of soft socialism was one of the greatest, and most terrible, of the New Deal legacies. (All this is very far from the views of Henry Steele Commager, who lauded the general acceptance by the public of Roosevelt s policies, since these bankrolled insolvent private-sector businesses as well as providing public sector programs to the disadvantaged.) 91 Max Lerner understood that the social forces operating in the 1930s were far more complicated than being simply about providing new and different ways of assisting the unemployed. According to him, Alexis de Tocqueville accurately foresaw the gradual formation of a Leviathan State during the Roosevelt administration. 92 He might also have imagined a new constellation of private associations working against it. Certainly, this was also a time, as 89 Ibid., 61, 88; Oscar Lewis, The Culture of Poverty Ekistics 23 (1966), 3, 4. 90 Williamson, After Tocqueville, 88, 163; Peter L. Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, To Empower the People: The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy (Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 1977), 2. 91 Henry Steele Commager, Commager on Tocqueville (Colombia MO: University of Missouri Press, 1993), 32, 59, 69. 92 Max Lerner, Tocqueville & American Civilization (New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994), 51. 16
Lerner notes, when the corporate barons of the private sector fought welfare laws and collective bargaining with every weapon. 93 Like Matthew Josephson, Lerner acknowledges the significant amount of influence that big business had through lobbying that worked relentlessly against a tyrannical majority made more terrible by state power, and an oppressive national consensus about the virtues of the New Deal, evidenced by Roosevelt s resounding victory in the 1936 presidential elections. An Appraisal and Interpretation of the Role of Civil Associations and Government in the United States during Franklin D. Roosevelt s Presidency (1933-1945) Civil associations during the time of Alexis de Tocqueville had been small and local. By the time of the New Deal, many were more substantial in size and less bounded by locality. The rise of the railroad was mainly responsible for this. It had not only created a transportation revolution, but also a more integrated national economy that tightly linked the agrarian West with the industrial East. 94 They were also the first truly national corporations in that they drew on the resources and capital of the entire country. Two prominent neo-conservative scholars have also focused their attention on the large and powerful social institutions that dominated public life in the thirties. Berger and Neuhaus have called both modern capitalist corporations and governmental institutions megastructures. 95 While the New Deal led to the considerable growth of the Federal government, private sector corporations were also among the most dominant and influential civil 93 Ibid., 63. 94 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings, 57-58; Ronald E. Seavoy, An Economic History of the United States: From 1607 to the Present (New York and London: Routledge, 2006), 239. 95 Berger and Neuhaus, To Empower the People, 2. 17